


A Moral Teething

by stilitana



Category: Being Human (UK)
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Identity Issues, Morality, Multi, Navel-Gazing, Rehabilitation, Roommates, when you're immortal you have a lot of time for navel-gazing it turns out
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-12 04:15:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19221394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stilitana/pseuds/stilitana
Summary: Honolulu Heights is getting crowded as Hal reluctantly embarks upon a dual rehabilitation expedition with his erstwhile protege.Meanwhile Tom attempts to learn the language of love, Alex seeks her unfinished business, and Allison launches the vampire awareness campaign.





	A Moral Teething

**Author's Note:**

> “All causes shall give way: I am in blood  
> Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,  
> Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” — Shakespeare, Macbeth
> 
> "I have no pity! I have no pity! The more the worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails! It is a moral teething; and I grind with greater energy in proportion to the increase of pain." — Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
> 
> Hello dear reader, I hope you enjoy this little tale. Feel free to find me on tumblr @stilitana. As always, comments and critique are welcome, and thank you for reading.

**1950**

The final mass ended and the parishioners left the church, none lingering long outside as they did in the morning, all eager to be home to their suppers. It was night in late January, all were bundled in their coats, breath fogging in the air before their pink-cheeked faces as they said their goodbyes. Cutler watched them from across the street. His cheeks were not pink, and his breath only stirred the air before him a few times every now and then, when he suddenly realized that he had forgotten to breathe and hurried to suck in great gulps of air, looking horror-struck each time he noticed his error. He stood with his shoulders hunched, hands crammed in the pockets of a coat that had been nice once but was now far too well worn to belong to anyone of any significance. His general look was of one attempting to imitate what he saw in the successful upper classes but who was falling woefully short, and thus instead managed only to look cheap and shabby, the sort of man other men of his status tried to avoid, as if bad luck and poor taste might be catching.

And yet had he not been happy? Aside from his failure to gain much respect or esteem in his profession, had he not secretly been satisfied just where he was, having always felt himself less virile than other men, ambitious only in an artificial way, because it was a value seen as desirable in the eyes of those he admired? The men he admired were wicked men, corrupt men who took bribes and pulled strings. He did not want to be like those men. He wanted to be good. He knew he was not a good man; he was too ill at ease, too overwhelmed, too easily swayed. He thought one day he might at least be able to say that he was, if not good, then decent. He wanted success because he had decided it was the thing to want, because one had to want something or else life felt all too long and pointless. One had to have goals to stave off the creeping black dread that came through the windows at night and brought doubt and fear into one’s heart, fear of being unable to provide for or keep happy the wife at one’s side, fear of being exposed as an empty-headed and hollow-chested man, doubt in one’s abilities, doubt of one’s faith. When these black thoughts came to him, he simply envisioned what he had decided to want—an office with a big mahogany desk, where his wife would be proud to come and see him in her fine dresses.

He had been happy, yes, but he had not known it until it was too late.

An older woman left the church and crossed the street, holding the hand of a little girl with brown pigtails poking out of the hood of her jacket. Cutler ducked back into an alley, but she had already seen him.

“Is that Nicky Cutler I see?” said the old woman.

“Hello, Miss Greely,” he said, giving her a wan, strained smile. He could hear her heart beating in her chest. Her heartbeat had a slight slushy quality which worried him, as though a valve or something was loose and the blood was sluicing back and forth. The little girl’s heart was strong and fast. Their blood was hot. It would steam if exposed to the winter air. He licked his lips as his stomach growled and cramped. He wanted to die, oh, he wanted to die, he wanted the ground to open up and swallow him, he wanted to have died six years ago, shot to death, honorably dead, proper dead, not dead like what he was now.

He wanted to say a prayer asking forgiveness for this unholy appetite, but lately the words got caught in his throat.

“We haven’t seen you in service for a while now, have we?” said Miss Greely. The little girl shook her head. “We was worried, young man, when we saw your Rachel in mass without you. She said you had a fever. And now we see her less and less, too. What are you doing standing out in the cold?”

“I haven’t been well,” he said, coughing into his fist. The cough was just an attempt to jar his body and remind it who was boss. He may have been undead but he was still a person, with a mind of his own, he was more than a stomach. Every day he told himself this with increasing desperation. Every day it felt less true. “Rachel’s been staying home, she felt bad going and leaving me. She’ll be back soon, I hope.”

“She’s a good girl, your Rachel. You shake that cold now, Mr. Cutler, you hear? Get on home. You’ve got no business standing on the street in the cold like this.”

“Yes, Miss Greely,” he said, watching them as they carried on down the street, biting his lip to tamp down a whimper. He felt his teeth piercing his flesh and then he tasted his own blood, which was cold and oozed sluggishly from the wound, like molasses. It was enough to sicken him, and that was enough to free him of his trance. He crossed the street as it started to rain, a light mist. He shivered. His body no longer retained heat the way it used to. He was cold down to his guts, like he’d never been cold before. He was always cold. At night when he held Rachel he felt her stiffen, as though she was afraid, her body tense, her face worried. Beneath the worry was guilt, and underneath the guilt was disgust. He did not blame her. He wanted to tell it was okay, she should not feel bad for being disgusted by him, it was only natural, because his body felt like a corpse. She was beautiful and young and full of life and it was natural that she should cringe away from him, her husband, when he was...not well. But he did not say that. He let her roll onto her side and did not touch her again until the next night when he was weak and goaded himself into reaching out, desperate to keep some connection with her, with the living. She was so warm. She was so warm and full of hot red blood his Rachel was oh god he had to stop.

Cautiously he approached the church. He made it up the steps and to the open doorway before he had to stop. He had to stop because he could not walk on holy ground and because the large crucifix hanging behind the altar was making his entire body cramp up and his stomach lurch and his head pound. He did not really understand the rules or how they worked. The gambler had also told him that he would burst into flames in the sunlight, but on the very first daybreak he had taken that risk, thinking it could not be true it could not and if it was, better to go out now before he had to come to grips with it. He’d been shaking and crying as he stepped into the light, eyes squeezed shut as he waited for the pain, and the pain did come, it hurt quite badly, but he had not caught fire. And behind him the gambler and his brainless bunch of lackeys laughed and laughed at him, standing in the sun, smoking a little and quivering, and he couldn’t help it, he joined them, even though he knew they were laughing at and not with him, he laughed hysterical laughter that was more like sobbing and the gambler had strolled into the light which seemed not to bother him at all to pinch his cheeks and coo at him.

“What a little baby you are, what a sweet little baby, you still tasted of your mother’s milk,” the gambler said.

The gambler was always saying odd creepy nonsense like that but somehow when it was coming from him Cutler hung on every word. Everything the gambler said felt like the truth, even though Cutler knew him to be a remorseless liar.

He wondered if he could not walk on holy ground for the same reasons he could not enter a private dwelling without an invitation. The church was God’s home and God had uninvited him. He was excommunicated, banished like Adam and Eve out of Eden, like Cain into the land of Nod. Gone, gone, he was gone, finished, done for. Even all merciful God had no mercy for him.

Cutler cleared his throat and tried to speak, but failed. He watched the priest’s shadow on the wall, coming closer and then further away. “Father,” he said.

Father O’Shea came to the door. He was a broad man with white hair and a serious, kindly face. “Hello?”

“It’s, ah. It’s Nick Cutler. My wife Rachel and I, we’ve been coming here for—”

“I know who you are,” said O’Shea. “What can I do for you? It’s raining, and freezing out there. Why don’t you come inside?”

Would that do it? Cutler felt an excited thrill in his chest. He inched forward, putting the scuffed toe of one leather shoe over the threshold. Immediately a wave of nausea and dread and horrible faintness welled up in him, and he jerked back, reeling. He bit his lip and shook his head. “I’m ok out here.”

“Really now, there’s no need for that, come in, come in.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I just—can’t come inside.” Cutler forced himself to look the priest in the eyes, hoping he would understand.

O’Shea nodded, eyeing him warily. “All right, we can talk from here then, if that’s how it has to be. Well, go on and tell me what it is.”

“Something terrible happened to me, a few months ago. And now I’m not—the same, anymore. And I don’t know what to do.”

“What sort of thing, lad?”

“Something that—changed me. For the worse. And I don’t think I can go back to how I was. I think the right thing would be for me to...to go far away from here, and never say where, and let everybody forget about me. I think that would be the right thing. But I don’t think I’m strong enough to do that. I’m weak, Father. I want to ask forgiveness but I don’t think even God would forgive me.”

“Be careful now, and don’t start thinking your sin lies beyond God’s forgiveness. That’s despair, and that itself is an eternal sin. There’s not a thing under the sun God can’t forgive, if you are truly penitent. Why don’t you come and confess?”

“I can’t come inside.”

“I don’t see how leaving your wife and your life here behind would be the right thing. But I don’t know the whole story, and I’m sure you wouldn’t say that without feeling you had good reason to. If it’s something you’ve done, some trouble you’ve gotten into, it’s nothing that can’t be fixed. It may seem like that, but trust an old man. It’s good you’re asking for help—there’s ways to fix whatever it is.”

“It’s nothing I’ve done. It’s something that’s happened to me, but—but the worst part hasn’t happened yet. It’s what I will do. I’m afraid I haven’t got much time or much choice. I just know that I’m...that something awful is going to happen.”

“You’ve got a choice all right. Everybody’s got a choice.”

Cutler looked at the ground, fidgeting as he grew agitated. “Father, do you know anybody who’d know about…”

“About what?”

“Never mind.”  
“Speak up, Nicholas.”

“About an exorcism,” Nick mumbled, staring at his shoes.

O’Shea was silent for a beat, and then he said, “Son, this isn’t about the war, is it?”

“No. No, that’s not what this is about.”

“Because you wouldn’t be the only young man I’ve spoken to who sought some kind of relief from that. Sometimes people carry for years, by themselves, something that happened, that they feel they can’t tell their wives or their families. It might help you, if you told me, and unburdened yourself.”

“It’s not about that,” Nick said, blinking and ducking his head. “It isn’t that. Father, is there anyway you could—I know it’s not how things are supposed to be done, but I need to receive Communion. I can’t come inside, or I would have been at mass. I’m—I’m very sick, Father, and I don’t know how long I’ll last with it, so if there’s any way—we could even say it’s last rites, if there’s any way at all, just this once—”

“You’re meant to be in a state of grace before receiving the Eucharist.”

“I know,” Nick said, swallowing a lump in his throat. “I’ve said all I can say.”

O’Shea nodded. To Nick’s disbelief, he turned back into the church, to the tabernacle, and returned with the Eucharist and chalice.

“The body of Christ,” said O’Shea.

“Amen,” Nick said, and O’Shea placed the Eucharist upon his tongue.

Tears immediately sprang to his eyes. The pain began as a dull ache which became a searing sensation. His body’s impulse to spit it out was almost irresistible. He clenched his hands until his nails drew blood and pressed his lips together, smiling through the agony. It was burning through his tongue, he could taste his own tongue cooking. He swallowed a huge mouthful of blood which washed the wafer down where it went on burning in his stomach.

He saw a flicker of something on O’Shea’s face, a dawning fear, and then the priest said, “The blood of Christ.”

“Amen,” Nick said, his voice garbled by his mangled tongue, the blood in his mouth, the pain. Tears ran down his face. He accepted the chalice and drank, his hands trembling, hardly daring to believe it might really be after all these years at last he’d know was it really the blood of—

His throat was lit on fire O’Shea made the sign of the cross over him burning his face his chest his mouth his throat his insides he was aflame he was making a horrible frantic animal noise that came out as just wheezing because he had no voice.

 

Cutler hated Fergus in ways he had not hated before. Hating the gambler’s other better recruit made him feel ugly inside but he could not help it. Fergus was stupid and brutish and Hal liked him better and _Hal liked him better_.

Fergus was jeering and grinning as he dragged Cutler up the steps and into the house where Hal lived. Fergus dragged him by the collar as Cutler’s legs struggled to gain purchase. He kept stumbling and falling and then he’d choke as Fergus kept on dragging him and his collar cut into his throat. Fergus dragged him through the entryway into the back sitting room where Hal was seated with a crystal glass in hand grinning his sly easy grin, his cold irresistible grin at a room full of other vampires, other sycophants all looking to suck up to him and gain favor. They all grew silent and turned to stare as Fergus burst through the doors with Cutler, who was crying and gagging and choking on his own blood which was pouring all down his chin over his front, making a high breathless noise that would have been screaming if he’d had a throat to scream with.

“Here’s your little pet,” Fergus said, throwing Cutler onto the ground and kicking him in the ribs. Cutler hardly felt the blow. He rolled onto his hands and knees, coughing up blood. “And he’s supposed to have some brains? I think you got a dud, better find another law boy, this one went and had hisself some crackers and wine with a priest, he’s toast now. Rough way to go, he’s bleeding all out inside and throwing it up.”

“What the fuck happened to him, Fergus?” one of the vampires said, his voice full of sadistic delight beneath the affectation of boredom.

Fergus grinned and made praying hands. “You ever been in a Catholic church, Royer? They fancy themselves cannibals in there. He had hisself some communion. Crackers and wine blessed by a priest, like. Tell them what you thought might happen,” Fergus said, nudging Cutler in the side with his boot. “Go on, tell them your bright idea. No? Cat got your tongue? Ok, I’ll go. In a Catholic church, they think their wine’s really blood.”

“Transubstantiation,” Hal said, staring at Cutler with an impassive, unreadable look, a pitiless look. “They believe that the Eucharist and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ.”

“That’s right. That’s exactly right,” said Fergus. Cutler glared up at him, hate burning in his eyes. Fergus was using his humiliation to gloat and suck up to Hal. “So the little idiot here, you know how he’s got a sensitive tummy, gets all squeamish and squirmy with the blood, well, he gets the bright idea to see if he can’t go ahead and have some of that holy wine, see if that’ll do the trick.”

“He thought that’d be really blood then?” Royer said.

The other vampires began to laugh and joke with each other while Cutler’s organs dissolved and his insides felt like one big bubble of burning blood that kept gushing out of his mouth. He kept gasping for air he didn’t need because it felt like drowning, and that just made it worse as it drew the blood back down his throat.

“Thank you, Fergus, for the little show,” Hal said, his voice low and smooth as he stood up and strolled towards Cutler with his hands behind his back. Cutler glared up at him, directing all the hate he’d directed at Fergus on Hal, and then some. If he had to die, at least he could scorn the man who’d killed him. Hal knelt down and took Cutler’s chin in a harsh grip, tilting his head up. “Say ah,” he said.

Cutler had no choice because he could hardly close his mouth around the blood he was vomiting up.

Hal peered into his mouth and tsked. “That can’t feel pleasant. I hope you weren’t trying to kill yourself, because that won’t do it, and there’s certainly less grotesque ways to get the job done. I’ll show them to you, so that next time you decide to pull a stunt, you can do it right. You can go off alone somewhere, the way a dog does. Even a dog’s got more manners than you. It knows better than to bother everyone with its dying.”

The vampires laughed uproariously, as though Hal had just delivered some stunning piece of comedy. Cutler could only try to put all the hate he had in his gaze.

Hal’s lips twitched up. “What a look you’re giving me,” he murmured. “Such hate, such _betrayal_. As if it had never occurred to you that someone would want to harm you. It’s touching. I don’t get such a look often. Most are too afraid or too busy bleeding out.”

“Fuck you,” Cutler tried to say, but his tongue wouldn’t cooperate. He wasn’t sure how much of one he had, but there were other ways to get the sentiment across, so he settled for spitting blood at Hal’s face.

Hal’s expression didn’t change, except that his eyes were like the eyes of a predator that saw something it was going to kill, but worse, because it was personal, because he was not just going to kill Cutler, he was going to make him suffer. The vampires quieted somewhat.

“You piece of shit,” Fergus said, striding forward.

Hal held up a hand. Then that hand was a fist and it crashed into the side of Cutler’s head. His skull lit up with pain, he was on the ground, the whole left side of his face feeling caved in and broken. And still they were laughing.

Hal stood, wiping his face clean with a handkerchief. “Fergus, take him to my rooms, please. And then get his blood washed up, it stinks.” Hal sniffed. “Like formula. Like baby powder.”

Fergus shoved him into Hal’s room. “You’re in for it now,” he hissed. “Hal had his fun, indulging his little lapdog, but now he’s sick of you like the rest of us have been. That’s what happens to useless little sissies who can’t pull their own weight around here. Sooner or later it quits being fun for him to toy with you and then he kills you and gets a new pet.”

Fergus slammed the door shut. The flow of blood from his mouth had slowed to a trickle. He flopped onto his back and looked at the ceiling which was pulsing and throbbing as if gripped in the tentacles of a giant squid. He could feel its suckers on his head, squeezing his skull. He lay there wheezing, he lay very still, because if he was very still the pain would not flare like fire, it would just stay boiling all over.

The door opened. He recognized Hal’s measured tread. Hal grabbed his arm and yanked so that he was sitting up. Cutler yelped and gurgled while Hal propped him up against the bed. He tried to focus his gaze on Hal and found that he was seeing double.

“Did you hear them laughing at you?” Hal said.

Cutler looked at the floor.

Hal snapped his fingers in Cutler’s face, grabbing his chin. “Look at me when I’m speaking to you. Answer.”

Cutler nodded, although the motion made nausea roll through his body. He put a hand to his mouth and hiccuped miserably.

“They laugh at you, Cutler, because you are nothing but a fool. A joke. You’re a court jester whose company we suffer because it amuses us. But a jester is not what I recruited. Not I. I recruited a solicitor, Cutler. Someone who stays out of trouble, doesn’t cause a scene, and does what I fucking tell him to do. Let them laugh at someone else’s fool. You’re mine. You’re mine and you reflect on me and when they laugh at you they are laughing at me, Cutler. Do you understand that?”

Cutler shook his head and tried to speak. Hal slapped him. “You will understand. You must. Do you think I recruit lightly? I do not. I’m not one of those self-important idiots who recruits left and right for his own amusement. I recruit what I need at the time, and that’s what I expect to receive. Why do you let yourself be made a fool of? Is it to punish me? For making you what you are? That would be misguided, Cutler. I would advise you not to do such a thing. One day you and I will see eye to eye, and until then, without me they’ll tear you apart. This world will tear you apart. Hate me all you want, but I am your only chance in all the world.” Hal smiled. “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. I’m your God now, Cutler, and I am a jealous God, and I won’t have you worshiping any others before me. I hope you’ve learned a lesson from all this. If blood is what you want, then have it.”

Hal passed him a full glass from the nightstand. Cutler shook his head, and Hal pressed it into his hands. Hal put his hand on the side of Cutler’s head, cradling his face. “I know you hate Fergus. You think he’s an idiot. But are you any wiser? You think you’re better than him? Then prove it. Right now all I see is a waste of space. You might as well have been stillborn. I want you to know that. I want you to know that your life as it stands right now is a void, an utter nothing. Drink that before I make you.”

Cutler drank and spluttered as the blood burned his mangled throat. Hal pressed a finger to the bottom of the glass, tilting it up, forcing it down his throat until it was empty. Then he hauled Cutler up and sat him on the closed toilet seat in the bathroom, stripped him of his bloody coat and shirt and set to cleaning the blood from his face and chest. His hands were gentle, his eyes soft, his voice tender when he leaned down to murmur in Cutler’s ear, “I hope you know that one day, one day very soon, you’re going to pay dearly for all the trouble you’ve given me. And afterwards, everything will be different. Everything will be so much easier for you. You won’t be confused anymore. I’m going to help you, Cutler. Free you. You and I will do great things together..”

Cutler shivered and closed his eyes and let Hal wash him of his blood and could not help but lean into the touch. He was weak. He had always been weak. He wanted to give in and let Hal and Hal’s capable hands take care of everything and he would not have to think anymore or decide anything ever again. That was what God was supposed to have done, made the way clear and plain for him, but God had locked him out and mutilated him, and here was Hal, whose house had many rooms, too.

 

**One Week Ago**

In the cafe Hal was wiping down the counter with a wet cloth: first five swipes clockwise, then another five anti-clockwise. He devoted his entire mind to the task, until his own biological rhythm was synchronized with the swiping motion, until he could see each individual droplet of water on the counter and then the little micro chips and nicks in the countertop, fine as strands of hair. Self-hypnosis worked wonders to calm him when one of the men working on a building across the street had cut his hand and the smell of his blood contaminated the air around him.

“You’ve been at that for ten minutes now,” Tom said. He stood by the door with the broom. It had been a quiet afternoon and now they were getting ready to close for the day. “There’s other tables to wipe down, you know.”

“Sorry,” Hal said, blinking. “Lost in thought.”

“It’s all right. Just making sure you’re not driving yourself mad in there,” Tom said, bumping his knuckles against his own skull.

Hal gave him a tight, grateful smile. “Give me some credit, Tom. If I’m going to lose my mind, I’ll at least wait until after Allison’s visit.”

Tom grinned and ducked his head and Hal felt a pang in his chest. He was learning to recognize these pangs as his way of feeling affection.

Tom looked up at him, still grinning but furrowing his brow. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course. You can always ask, whether you get an answer is another story.”

Tom scoffed. “It’s just that Allison mentioned that maybe we might think about...you know.”

Hal arched a brow. “What?”

“Transforming together.”

Hal was quiet for a moment, processing both Tom’s words and the weight with which he said them. After all these years he had learned to compensate for his natural difficulty with reading tones and faces. The implicit comprehension of what others were feeling that so many people seemed to have had never been his, and it had not gotten easier with time, so he had taught himself to be patient and to analyze body language and social cues. This brought him the same results as a greater talent for empathy would have, it just required more effort on his part, effort he was glad to put in when he was in a good cycle. When he was otherwise occupied, it didn’t matter that he was not so naturally empathetic, because even if he had been, that capacity would have been smothered by blood, which made everyone on it callous and unable to sympathize.

“You sound like the idea concerns you,” Hal said. “What about it has you...well, concerned?”

“I haven’t transformed with anybody in a while.”

Hal started wiping the counter again, counting his swipes with the cloth. He wanted to be the person Tom could talk to about these things, he wanted to be a friend to him, but he felt woefully inadequate. He didn’t want Tom to know how badly he was floundering. “Well...are you worried about safety? Because everything has been fine with how you’ve been doing things, so I don’t see how adding Allison to the mix will put anyone at greater risk. If anything I would think the risk would lessen, as you’ll have each other for company.”

“I know. I think it’d be good fun. It was always better, when there was someone else. Like less lonesome, ‘cause you’re not meant to be on your own, you’re meant to have a pack.”

“Then isn’t this a good thing?”

“I guess. I guess I just—I don’t know how this would change things between us? Allison and I are...I don’t really know how things are, to be honest.”

“Well, she clearly adores you.”

Tom shook his head, grinning. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s true. She talks about you like you hung the moon. Er. I mean. You know what I meant by that.”

“I know, Hal.”

“She admires you, Tom. As she should, you’re a good man and whatever disputes you’ve ever had have only been because you want to protect her.”

“Allison doesn’t seem like she wants me protecting her, though. She wants to be tough and do it on her own.”

Hal took a breath. “Tom, what I’m going to say may sound outdated, but you’re a man with a sense of chivalry, so I know you at least will understand that I mean no offense to the fairer sex with what I’m about to say.”

“You’ve already failed at that just by calling ‘em the fairer sex.”

“Women have been caught in the middle of two conflicting desires for centuries. It’s nothing new, it’s just more freely talked about, that’s all. On the one hand they want to be self-reliant and able to do everything a man can do. And they can—society just hasn’t caught up yet. But on the other hand, they want...how to put this...a man who makes them feel like a woman.”

“I’m telling Alex you said that.”

“Go right ahead, I’ve not said anything I won’t stand by.”

“Yeah, we’ll see if you’re still saying that when Alex hears.”

“I’m trying to give you advice, Tom. I think I know a thing or two about women. I’ve been alive half a millennium.”

“That’s what’s so sad about it,” Tom said, grinning and shaking his head.

Hal frowned at him, though his lips kept twitching into a smile. “Allison doesn’t want you to be too protective because it implies to her that you don’t respect her abilities, that you think she’s weak and needs protecting. She wants you, but she doesn’t want to need you. Meanwhile, you think no such thing, you just care about her and are trying to show that by looking out for her, because that’s how men prove their worth.”

“Took you half a millennium to work that out, did it?”

“You’re the one who asked for my help.”

“I didn’t, you just started spouting off at the mouth about women.”

“Oh. Sorry. I thought you wanted—I don’t understand why you’re worried, Tom. I know that Leo spoke fondly of the few times he got to transform with others. It seems like it could be a good bonding experience. It may even be a way for you two to move beyond this little tension you’re having.”

Tom was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “You know, George and Nina got Eve while they was, you know.”

Hal replayed that sentence mentally, trying to discern its meaning, mouthing, Nina got Eve...and then his eyebrows raised, and he said, “Oh.”

Tom’s face was stubbornly stoic, not one trace of a blush as he swept the floor.

Hal cleared his throat. “Well...so that...that is a concern for you, I guess, having heard of that happening, but I think that’s got to be very _rare_ , Tom. From my understanding, George and Nina were already in that sort of relationship, and otherwise it probably wouldn’t have...I mean I’m not an expert, but from what I know that’s how these things, er, tend to work out.”

“Thanks for the chat, Hal, it was real helpful,” Tom said, effectively cutting the conversation off at the knees.

Hal shut his mouth and nodded. “Good talk.”

“How do you think Alex and the barbecue are getting on?”

Hal winced. “Oh, well, don’t you think? I mean, they’ve really gotten sort of friendly lately, haven’t they?”

“With any luck she’ll have killed him by the time we’re back.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t bet on it. And give up the only company she’s got at home, and someone she can boss around to boot? I don’t think so.”

“They are weirdly friendly lately. It’s creepy.”

“Well, you know what they say, adversity makes strange bedfellows.”

“They don’t say that. Nobody but you says that.”

“They do, it’s Shakespeare.”

“Right, exactly, and you’re the only one goes around quoting Shakespeare.”

“I’m not, we all do all the time, knowingly or otherwise.”

Tom rolled his eyes. “If you get back to wiping that counter now, you might finish by midnight.”

 

In the house at Honolulu Heights, Alex was enjoying her feast. She’d had fries, a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup, fried chicken, and now she was about to enjoy some chocolate milk.

She held the glass out and placed the straw inside with a flourish and a wicked grin. Cutler sat strapped in the chair, looking pale and green, staring at her in dismay.

“Mm,” Alex said, rubbing her belly. “You’re a _life-saver_. Seriously. I was _dying_ to taste food again.” She snorted. “Get it? I crack myself up.”

“You’re a regular comedian,” he said, his voice hoarse. He'd been let out of the chair for a whole week, allowed to be locked in his room or even free to roam the living room and kitchen if the rest of them were around, until the night before, when he had made the mistake of opening the door for the delivery man to pick up the pizza Alex had also demanded, and she’d caught him “getting all goggly-eyed.” It didn’t matter how much he said that no, he had not gotten goggly-eyed, had never gotten goggly-eyed in his life, and hadn’t the faintest idea what she even meant by that—it was her word against his, so back into the chair for the day he went. She enjoyed meting out such punishments. He didn’t protest much. He was resigned to the fact that Alex’s afterlife was devoted to making the living hell that was his life extra hellish.

“Really though, without you who knows when Hal or Tom would’ve thought to mention the whole me being able to taste food thing? You would have thought that would’ve been the first thing they said. All that time I could’ve been eating, wasted.”

“Must have slipped Hal’s mind,” Cutler said. “Imagine that.”

“Yeah. Imagine. He and I’ll be having a chat. How likely you think it is that his not wanting to be a guinea pig might have made it slip his mind?”

“I’d say that’s about certain.”

Alex patted him on the head. “Good thing I have you, then.”

“Good thing,” he said, giving her a wide, pained grin.

She wiped her hand on his jacket. “You’re all gross and sweaty. I thought you were done with the gross and sweaty part of the whole detox thing.”

“Yes, well, being strapped into a chair for seven hours and tortured will do that to a person.”

“Oh, this isn’t torture. I haven’t started torturing you yet.”

“Kinky.”

“You wish. Ugh. Shut up, you’re putting me off my chocolate milk.”

“Good, because _I’m_ off your chocolate milk, too. I can’t eat that.”

“Hal eats human food all the time, it obviously doesn’t hurt you guys. You’re just being dramatic.”

“Well, we can’t all be Hal.”

“Thank God, one of him is already too many.”

“Look at us, agreeing on things.”

“Okay, chocolate milk time,” she said, poking him in the face with the straw.

He leaned back, glaring at her. “You’ve had beginner's luck, don’t push it. It takes a lot of practice before you’re good at this, so end today on a good note why don’t you before you get something you regret.”

“Is that a threat? Are you threatening me?”

“No, I’m warning you. I told you that when you’re starting out you can’t always be sure you’re focused on getting just one sensation, just one that’s going on right now, because you’re messing about in my brain, and I can’t help it if I remember something or think of something and you aren’t skilled enough yet to block it out. Besides, it’s making me sick. And if I’m sick and you’re doing your ghost telepathy on me, then you’ll be sick too.”

“Interesting. And yet I still want it.”

“What time is it?” Cutler said, craning his neck in a futile attempt to see the clock.

Alex scoffed. “Really? You think _Hal’s_ going to save you? Get real, he barely got away with keeping you alive. Hal can’t do shit.”

“Fine,” Cutler snapped. He took the straw in his mouth and took a gulp of milk, immediately gagging.

Alex recoiled, taking her hand off of his head. “What the _hell_ was that?”

“I told you,” he said, glowering at her. “You can’t do it anymore today, wait for Tom and Hal, they’re you’re friends, I’m sure they’ll be happy to help if you ask them, just leave me alone.”

He'd only wanted to help her. Not that anyone would believe that. It wasn't out of character, though he was ashamed to admit it. He was a people-pleaser, that was all, and he'd been downright thrilled to have shared a useful snippet of ghosty knowledge with her that apparently nobody else had yet. He'd been preening until she decided to stuff him full of garbage to take her new skill on a test run.

Alex scrunched up her face in disgust. “Oh. Eugh. You didn’t say it was _that_ bad.”

“It’d be a little rich, me complaining to you, don’t you think?”

“Well, yeah. But still. Speak up next time.”

“I mean, it was fine at first, you were, you know, enjoying yourself.”

Alex looked at him funny, and then changed the subject entirely, as she was wont to do when she didn’t want to deal with whatever was at hand. “They’ll be back any minute. You’ve been a model prisoner. Makes me wonder if Hal used the whole detox thing as an excuse to be an asshole. I guess he had loads more years of blood to be rid of, though.”

“I prefer to think he’s just an asshole.”

“Could be,” Alex said. “So far that’s described every vampire I’ve met.”

“It describes all the ones you haven’t met, too. Trust me, I know.”

“I figured.”

“I mean, think about it. Nobody nice would last long like this. And if they did, they wouldn’t be so nice anymore. The rest of you have something to hope for. Ghosts get doors, werewolves are only monsters once a month. We’re just parasites overstaying our welcome. A ‘nice’ vampire’s a dead one, he’d have staked himself right off and been done with it. What do we have to hope for? We probably don’t even have an afterlife. Or if we do it’s going to be horrible—we’ve all met those men with sticks and rope,” he said, smiling even as he cringed.

“And here I thought you were like, the vampire Twitter spokesman or whatever the fuck. What kind of a PR speech is that?”

Cutler shrugged. “It’s just the truth.”

“That’s bleak, is what it is. That's not the tune you were singing a couple weeks ago, when you _begged_ us to help you. Come on now, you lot can’t all be bad. You can be better, you just need a little work, is all. Everybody gets a second chance and all that rubbish, right?”

“A second chance, all right. But what about a third and a fourth and a fifth chance? Some people never even get one. Maybe nobody deserves so many. And that’s what you’re looking at, with us.”

Alex glared at him. “Are you trying to talk me into staking you? Because it sure sounds like it.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t _think_ so?”

“Can I be honest with you?” he said, trying to sit up straighter, tensing against the restraints.

“You’d better be nothing but honest with me.”

“Ok. It’s just that it's getting very hard to be around you.”

“You’re no walk in the park yourself.”

He laughed, though it was more of a bitter huff of air than laughter. “I’ve never heard that before.”

She stared at him with a sharp, appraising eye. He looked down and tried not to look visibly uncomfortable with her gaze, failing. “I’m glad you feel bad.”

“Of course you are.”

“Not for selfish reasons. Not because I want to punish you, although, yeah, there’s some of that. It means you’re really just about all dried out. Hal’s told me how when you guys are on it, you can’t really feel bad stuff, like guilt and the like. And that’s how come it’s so hard to go off, because you’ve got to deal with all the horrible things you did when you weren’t...weren’t yourselves. When you couldn’t feel bad about it. So if you feel bad, that means you’re getting better.”

“Lucky me.”

“Lucky you indeed.” She tilted her head, regarding him. “You know, you might be the only one who knows how weird it is for me to be talking to you like this. Like...friendly like.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, you know. You’re still friends with Hal.”

Cutler looked away with a bitter smile. “Hal doesn’t have friends. Hal’s got three kinds of people—nannies, lackeys, and food.”

“Which one were you?”

“Ask Hal, he likes to keep you guessing.”

“I guess you think I’m his nanny, then.”

Cutler nodded. “Plus lunch, yeah.”

“Are you—are you trying to manipulate me right now? Turn me against Hal, or something?”

“No. I don’t think people ever need help to turn against Hal, just time.”

“I’m nobody’s _nanny_.”

“Good. Just be sure he gets the memo.”

“I will, thanks very much,” she said, affronted. “You’re a real piece of work, aren’t you?”

“I’m going to be sick, is what I am.”

“Oh no you don’t, not here,” she said, scrambling to get the straps off.

The front door opened and Hal and Tom walked in.

“And that’s how come a bear would win in a fight with a shark,” Tom said.

“That’s ridiculous, Tom. That’s utter lunacy. A bear defeating a shark in the shark’s own domain? It just doesn’t make any sense.”

“And here comes the circus,” Alex muttered. “You two come get these straps off mister burn ward over here before he hurls on the carpet.”

“Oh. He’s still alive,” Tom said, sounding only slightly put out. He began helping Alex get the straps off. “What’re you two doing?”

“Eating us out of house and home, apparently,” Hal said, inspecting the mess Alex had made of the kitchen. “Alex, what on earth have you done to the kitchen?”

“Just practicing my spooky ghost brain powers, that’s all. My ghost powers which you haven’t helped me with, thanks very much.”

As soon as the straps were off Cutler scrambled out of the chair and up the stairs on wobbly legs. In the bathroom dry heaving over the toilet, he could still hear them downstairs.

“Alex, you can’t make him eat all that, he’ll be sick.”

“Pretty sure that’s what he’s doing now, yeah.”

“I know you and he have a...history, together—”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“But even so, I wouldn’t have thought you’d be cruel.”

“Don’t know why you’d have thought that,” Tom said. “She’s a mean one sometimes, I wouldn’t wanna be on her bad side.”

“It’s not like I was _torturing_ him. You make it sound so bad, I just made him eat a bunch of stuff, what’s the problem? He barely even whined about it.”

“Without going into a biology lesson, which I’m sure you’d love—”

“Spare me.”

“There’s only one thing a vampire is meant to be eating in any significant quantity.”

“You eat regular food all the time! And you must need to eat _something_ , if you aren’t dining on human blood.”

“Yes, something, in small, bland quantities, not a bunch of junk.”

“Hey, I don’t think you’re in any position to tell me what’s junk food.”

“And just because I can do something, doesn’t mean everybody else can.”

“Yes Hal, you’re very special, we know.”

“I’m being serious, these things depend on a number of variables, namely age, tolerance, natural strengths and weaknesses—plus, he's still on the cusp of sobriety, he's not in any state to be your test subject.”

"That's right. Remember when all you could eat was mushy bananas?"

"Don't remind me."

“Ok, ok, I get it! Quit chewing me out, Hal, he’s gonna be fine. Ha. See what I did there?”

“Ask me or Tom next time, that’s all.”

“You’re not even gonna acknowledge that stellar pun?”

“Puns are a crass form of humor, Alex. I don’t find them particularly amusing.”

“Get out of my kitchen. Take your pompous ass up those stairs, there you go.”

Cutler washed his mouth out in the sink and made it to Hal’s room across the hall before he could get the door shut. Hal gave him a helpless, bedraggled look. “It’s been a very long day, can I have just a moment?”

“Cry me a river. How was work?”

“Dull, uneventful, predictable. All the things work tends to be.”

“For a lowly cafe janitor, maybe. Oh how the mighty have fallen.”

Hal sniffed. “I’m sorry my line of work doesn’t live up to your lofty expectations of me, but I refuse to apologize for what I do to keep this house afloat.”

Cutler scoffed. “Keep this house afloat? You don’t need a cafe job to do that, please. You’re five hundred years old, you could buy this place outright.”

Hal made a face and tilted his head. “Well. Not quite.”

“Not quite?”

“Let’s just say I made some bad investments and leave it at that, shall we?”

Cutler didn’t bother to hide his incredulity. “What sort of _bad investments_ can wipe out centuries of wealth accruement?”

Hal grimaced. “See, it’s these little phrases like ‘wealth accruement’ which have never held my interest.”

It shouldn't have come as any shock; Nick had watched Hal bleed money, gambling on dogfights. Not that he'd watched the dogfights himself, except on those nights Hal forced him to come along "for a night out with the boys." 

“Now this may shock you, but not everything of value is about your instant gratification.”

Hal smiled. “Well, historically, that’s why I’ve had people like you around, isn’t it?”

Cutler’s face fell and Hal bit his lip, looking regretful. “Sorry. I was—that was a joke. I see it wasn’t a very funny one.”

“Well, that’s okay. You don’t have to have a sense of humor, you’ve got people for that too, I guess.”

“Don’t be cross. It isn’t like that anymore.”

“Isn’t it, though?”

“No. What do you mean?”

“I mean you, here, playing house with those two, like you’re the bloody Addams Family.”

“I don’t know who the Addams—”

“They care about you. They think you’re _good_.”

Hal swallowed. “They think I’m far better than I am, yes. And I’ll be forever indebted to them for that, because their belief keeps me striving every day to be that person, even as I know I’ll always fall short.”

“Come off it, Hal. These cycles of yours, that’s just how you break up the decades. These people are a distraction to you, accessories to this little bout of self-flagellation. Whether you’re abstaining or not, you’ll always be draining people. They care about you and you’re using them.”

None of the cold fury he had grown used to seeing in Hal’s eyes appeared. Instead he looked weary and sad. “You could be right about some things. They deserve better. But I’m like any other of our kind, Nick. I’m too weak to let go of a good thing until it’s gone. I care about them, too, and I would do anything for them, anything. If I’m using them it’s only in the ways I can’t help but use them, in the ways I need them to keep me...neutralized. I consider them my family.”

“That’s it? Some platitudes, that’s all you’ve got for me? You’re just going to let me talk to you like that?”

“You can say anything you like. I understand why you’re upset with me and I—”

Cutler laughed. “Upset with you? You think I’m _upset_ with you?”

“Well, aren’t you?”

“What even is this sad little act of yours? Why are you—you should be...you ought to be punishing me, not commiserating.”

“Is that what you want me to do?”

“Don’t ask me that. This is so wrong. I don’t know how to talk to you like this.”

“You’re mouthing off in the hopes that I’ll snap and it will be like it used to, because at least then you knew where you stood.”

“That’s enough, Dr. Freud, back off.”

Hal took a step closer and Cutler stepped back, out of the doorway and into the hall. “All those years I was away, becoming a different person, but you were stuck. You were stuck with the man I was when you knew me, looming over your shoulder, and you were stuck with the person I made you into. You’re different and yet nothing has changed. I understand that, Nick. Change is painful. But change you must. I’m sorry. If it weren’t for me you wouldn’t have to.”

“Don’t apologize to me. Not for that. You’re not allowed to, don’t ever—don’t do it again. Once was bad enough.”

“But I am. I _am_ sorry.”

“You don’t get to be _sorry_. I don’t know what to do with you, if you’re sorry, I don’t—I don’t make any sense if you’re sorry. If you’re sorry, then what the hell am I? You’d better not be sorry, Hal, you’d better—better stick to your goddamn principles, all the history making _bullshit_. I don’t want you to be sorry.”

“I’m afraid you don’t get to decide. You don’t have to forgive me, but whether you do or not, I’ll still be sorry.”

“It’s too horrible if you’re sorry,” Nick said, his voice cracking. “That makes it all—absurd. All for nothing. Just some sick game you played and then, what, got tired of?”

“You’ll just have to live with that.”

Cutler laughed, high and unhinged. “So now I’m another little experiment, is that it? First you ruin me, now you want to fix me? God, my whole fucking life has just been your vanity project.”

“Everything you’re feeling is understandable. It’s all justified. You should go ahead and get it all out in the open, it might help.” Hal sighed, as though all of this was tedious. "Although I do feel like we're talking in circles. We must have had some version of this very conversation a dozen times since you came asking me for help. Don't forget that part."

“Sorry, am I _boring_ you? Do you have to be so calm? Can’t you at least have the decency to get angry or something?” 

“I’m sorry you find composure offensive, but it’s vital to success at what we’re attempting here. If you can’t control your temper, you’ll never control greater urges.”

Cutler groaned. “You’re not the fucking Buddha, Hal. I bet you hate that it’s me here, and not somebody else, not—not Fergus, or one of those other dolts you kept around.”

Hal’s brow furrowed. “Why on earth would you think that?”

“Because—I don’t know. Because he’d never agree to this, and then you’d have to put him down and you could act all mournful and feel good about it, how you wish you hadn’t had to do it but you made the right call. I bet you wish I was him because he’d have been out there sucking your neighbors dry and then you could have gotten rid of me but now you can’t because you brought me back and this guilty conscience you’ve decided to grow won’t let you kill me so you’re stuck with me now and you must hate it, that’s the only thing about this I can stand, how much you must _hate_ it. Stuck with the worst one you ever recruited.” He laughed.

“You’ve got it totally backwards. Of all my recruits you must be the only one who’d have lasted this long, and I don’t hate you for it. Far from it.”

“The only reason I’m still here is because—you know why.”

“Why?”

“Because I wasn’t like you,” Cutler hissed. “I was a fucking embarrassment.”

“Yes, you were. In one sense. In another sense, I got exactly what I bargained for.”

“What the fuck are you on about now?”

“What I’m going to say isn’t nice, but I feel I owe it to you. I recruited you because, despite the common shortcomings everyone has in them, you were essentially a decent man. And I had never recruited someone I'd call decent before. I wanted to see what would happen.”

Cutler gave him a sickly smile and spread his arms. “And lo and behold, here we both are.”

“Yes. Here we are.”

Hal said it with such quiet certainty that Cutler couldn’t bear to look at him a second longer. He needed to be out of the house, putting as much distance between himself and Hal as he could. He fled down the stairs and to the front door, past Tom and Alex, who were sitting quietly on the couch watching the TV with the volume up loud. He tried the doorknob but it stuck despite not being locked. He turned to look at Alex.

“Let me out.”

“No way. You’re not ready for that.”

“I’m not your responsibility. Let me out and you’ll never have to see me again.”

“Hm...how about, no again?”

“Alex, you’re not part of Hal’s little guilt fest. You could be nothing but glad to see me leave.”

“Only way you’re leaving is impaled on a stake, mate,” Tom said.

“Can’t I please just go outside? What if I promise I’ll come back, what about then?”

Alex grimaced. “Don’t start begging, it’s gross.”

The fight went out of him and he sank onto one of the barstools, staring numbly at the television. “What’s this?”

“Forensic Files,” Tom said, with obvious distaste. He pointed with his thumb at Alex. “Because this one’s morbid.”

Alex shrugged. “I’m dead, I get to be morbid.”

Cutler noted the raised volume and cleared his throat. “Did you, um...I mean, how much of that did you hear?”

“The whole thing,” Tom said.

“Not a whole lot of privacy in this house, is there?”

“Practically none,” Alex said with false cheer. “If you want privacy you’d better start tapping out your next tiff in Morse.”

“Noted.”

They sat in awkward silence for a few minutes while the monotonous voice over described what could be gleaned from the blood splatter patterns on some lady’s pool patio. Cutler’s stomach growled. He crossed his arms and cleared his throat, his face burning.

How much lower could you sink? Surely he must be about scraping rock bottom by now. Every time he thought so, he discovered new depths.

“You know, if it makes you feel any better, I find him a real horror to argue with, too,” Alex said.

“Yeah?” Cutler said, hardly hearing her. The dramatic reenactment was on, showing how the blood splatter was created as the narration continued to describe it in all its gory detail. He was salivating over a cheap, poorly done television reenactment that didn’t show anything but some red liquid falling in slow motion and dripping down a wall and puddling and pooling all deep rich red soaking into the ground. He swallowed.

Tom glanced around, took one look at him, and changed the channel. “Right, executive order, no more Forensic Files.”

“What? Come on,” Alex said. “I like the sciency part.”

“It’s making vampire junior’s eyeballs get black.”

“What? No they aren’t,” Cutler said, blinking. “And don’t call me that.”

“Are you serious?” Alex said, turning around to stare at him in disgusted fascination. “ _That_ got you going?” 

“No, it didn’t.”

“The eyes don’t lie,” Tom said.

“You sound like some kind of vampire guru,” Alex said. “The eyes don’t lie—you should write that on a card or something.”

“This has never happened to me before,” Cutler said, sounding so genuinely distressed that Alex believed him.

“Ok, don’t get all worked up about it. I mean, it’s gross and creepy as all hell, but, I guess, it’s like a starving person watching the Food Network, right? I’m sure every, er, newly rehabilitated vampire has to go through this.”

“Hey Hal, has blood on telly ever made your eyes get wonky?” Tom said.

Hal was coming down the stairs, looking reticent. When Tom spoke, his expression became miffed. “What?”

“Like on Forensic Files, does that make you hungry?”

Hal’s brow furrowed. “No, that’s never happened to me.”

“Well he’s a chronic liar anyway, so who cares,” Nick said.

“However, we didn’t have a television until...1980 something? And as a rule I avoid watching anything violent.”

“Yeah, we know, you’re a bore and you only watch history docs. Makes sense, that’s where you belong,” Alex said. “Change it back, Tom, let’s experiment. Forensic Files should rebrand, porno for vampires.”

“Please never say anything like that again,” Hal said. “I’m begging you. It physically pains me, the things you say sometimes. Why are we having this conversation? “

“We could stop having it, any time really,” Cutler said.

“Quiet junior, no more late night telly for you,” Alex said.

“I came down here to see what you all were up to, and clearly you’re in the midst of losing your minds, so I guess I’ll just be on my way.”

“Wait! House meeting,” Alex said. “We have a special guest arriving in a few days.”

“We all know that, Alex,” said Hal. “We’ve been preparing all week. Or should I say, _I’ve_ been preparing.”

“Your idea of preparing is steam-cleaning the drapes. Really not something to gloat about.”

“I only want to make Allison feel welcome in our home, as if it were her own.”

“That’s sweet and all, Hal, but you’re the only one made to feel at home by wrinkle-free drapes. Everybody else on planet Earth doesn’t give a shit.”

Tom sighed heavily. Hal and Alex immediately turned their attention upon him.

“What’s the matter, Tom?” Alex asked.

“Nothing. Just—can you lot try not to bicker so much, when Allison’s here?”

Hal’s brow furrowed some more. “We don’t bicker that much, Tom.”

“Aw,” Alex said, smiling in a way that made her chin wrinkle and her lower lip stick out. “This is just like when my little brother would have his girlfriend over and we’d all embarrass him! Those were my proudest moments.”

“I don’t mean like, don’t be yourselves, or anything, just—just pretend you like each other, and be nice?”

“We do not _pretend_ to like each other, Tom,” Hal said, affronted.

“Eh,” Alex said, waving one hand in the air. “Sometimes.”

“I happen to like you all very much,” Hal said, glaring at her and putting his hands on his hips.

“Bleh, I threw up in my mouth a little,” Alex said.

“Very mature, Alex.”

“Like you’re one to talk.”

“See, this, I think this is an example of what Tom just asked you not to do,” Cutler said.

“Why’s _he_ the only one who gets it?” Tom said, throwing up his hands.

“We get it, Tom, we just aren’t kiss-ups,” said Alex. “Speaking of. What’s Allison going to think about that one? Is she okay with it?”

“He has a name, you know,” Hal said.

“They can call me whatever they want," Cutler said.

“Oh, really? Then who was complaining about vampire junior five minutes ago?” Alex said.

“Allison's fine with it,” Tom said. “She’s a little too fine with it.”

“What’s that mean?” Alex said.

“Means she thinks he’s a ‘valuable research subject’ and wants to help him ‘make up for past transgressions’ by helping her with some kind of advocacy thing.”

“Advocacy being such a specialty of mine,” Cutler said.

“She’s going to bug you, a lot.”

“Oh no, how horrible, I can’t think of any worse fate.”

“And you’d better be _nice_ to her, or else.”

“I’ll be nice. I can be nice.”

“I know you can,” said Tom, giving Cutler a look that made him feel very small and mean inside. Tom had trusted him and he’d betrayed him in the worst way possible.

He resolved to make it up to him as best he could. “I’ll be actually nice this time.”

“You will be, or else you’ll be staked.”

“Ok, I got that part, earlier, when you oh so subtly implied it.”

“That wasn’t nice. That was snarky,” Alex said.

Cutler stuck out his tongue at her, and she responded in kind.

“Alex, you want to hear what Hal said about the fairer sex today?” Tom asked.

“No, but let’s have it anyway.”

Hal sighed and went to go putter around in the kitchen, rearranging the pots and pans.

 

The room they’d put Cutler in was not meant to be a bedroom at all. Depending upon one’s disposition it could be called either cramped, or cozy. Cutler tended towards calling it the latter, except for the fact that at night lying on his back on the twin mattress he felt that the walls were closing in and felt a laugh caught in his throat because it was like lying in a coffin.

When he’d first been turned, that was another little lie Hal told him. Hal had made a solemn presentation of Cutler’s very own room in his house, once he left his own behind. “And now you’ll rest like a proper vampire,” Hal had said, Fergus standing at his shoulder. He’d swung open the door and to Cutler’s horror, there against the wall lay a coffin.

“You can’t be serious,” he’d said.

“Nothing could be more serious,” Hal said. “Sweet dreams.”

That night Cutler had opened the coffin and stood staring into it for a long moment. It was lined with black cloth. It had been almost a year since he’d been turned and every growing day he felt himself a greater threat to Rachel, so at last he had taken Hal up on the offer of a place to stay. He supposed this was what he got for giving in. Rachel must think he was having an affair. His own discomfort was a small price to pay for her safety, and a fitting consequence of the pain he was causing her. He climbed into the coffin and shut the lid and crossed his arms over his chest. He was dead. He couldn’t find his heartbeat. His body was probably rotting on the inside and soon it would creep outward, black rot like the slimy gills on the underside of a mushroom. He wore cologne all of the time because he was afraid he might smell like a corpse and didn’t want Rachel to notice. They didn’t touch anymore. They hadn’t made love or even kissed in months. She was pale and withdrawn. He tried to do little things to make up for it all, sending her flowers at work and having dinner ready for her and the like, but he knew his attempts only made things worse because they stood in contrast to all the distance between them, a paltry sum in comparison to the obvious secret he was keeping.

Maybe he was dead, really dead, and all of this was a nightmare he was having in the split second before total brain death and it was about to be over and he wouldn’t exist at all and that would be so wonderful.

In the morning someone swung the lid open and the sunlight came crashing in and he bolted up gasping and there in the room was Hal, grinning, and behind him the other vampires howling with laughter. Hal patted him on the cheek with the palm of his hand, a little too hard so that it stung. “Wakey wakey, little one,” he said.

“What—what’s going on?” Cutler said, blinking his eyes and rubbing his palms up and down his arms, wincing as the sunlight prickled and pinched at his skin, like a thousand hair-thin needles of ice.

“I can’t believe you got him in that coffin, let alone to spend the whole night in there,” one of the vampires, Royer, crowed.

“You shouldn’t be so quick to laugh, all of you,” Hal said, giving Cutler a pleased smile, a smile that repulsed him as much as it made his chest feel light and fluttery and desperate. “What an eager, willing little duck he is. How loyal, how he trusts me. You should all want such a recruit.”

“If you’re willing to nurse your recruit out of a bottle, maybe,” someone muttered.

Hal went very still, his gaze never leaving Cutler’s. His smile quirked wider and he put one finger to his lips, shushing him, and then he whispered so quietly he barely made a sound at all, so that only Cutler could hear him. “Don’t listen to them. One day I will kill him and you’ll get to watch him die. Don’t pay them any mind. They don’t know you like I do.”

Then Hal stood and held out his hand. Cutler took it. Hal pulled him out of the coffin.

He lay in the dark trembling. In the dead of night in the deepest blackest trough of night when the sun was furthest away he could hear rodents stirring in the grass poking in the trash he could hear dew condensing on the grass he could hear the neighbors’ hearts beating. He had learned to tell them apart by their heartbeats. To the left lived a couple who either had sex or an argument or exercised together every Thursday evening and most Saturdays. To the right was an old woman whose heartbeat was like Miss Greely’s with its slushy backwash of blood. While he listened to it he sometimes imagined himself knocking on her door and telling her she ought to have her heart checked thereby saving her life, but saving it from what? They all died eventually.

The room only had space enough for the mattress against one wall and a desk along the other beneath the window that was covered with a single board that left a half-inch strip of naked sky on the top and bottom.

He went downstairs, creeping past Hal’s room, although if Hal was awake he would surely hear. In the living room he paused, surprised to find the television on but muted, and then there was movement in his peripheral vision, the uncanny corner of the eye humanoid figure.

“It’s just me,” Alex said.

“You nearly gave me a heart attack."

“I was just sitting here, but sorry, I guess.”

“It was nice, actually. Gets the blood pumping a little.”

“Weirdo.”

“What are you doing, lurking around in the night?”

“I’m not lurking, I’m just sitting here. You’re the one lurking. And keep your voice down, those two wake up if a mouse sneezes outside.”

“I forgot that you don’t sleep.”

“You don’t seem to much yourself.”

“Well, I’m nocturnal.”

“No you’re not. You’ve been awake all day.”

“Ok, well, for the past fifty years I’ve been semi nocturnal, then.”

“Sure. Not just that you have insomnia or something, you’re bloody nocturnal.”

“We all are, naturally. You just have to train yourself to be awake in the daytime since that’s what the human world demands. If you care to be part of it, that is.”

“I wish I could sleep. I wouldn’t even care when I did it, day or night.”

He hesitantly went towards her, sat on the barstool furthest away.

“It must get lonely,” he said.

“It’s hard getting used to a quiet house. My house before was never quiet, you never had a moment alone. My brothers were always around, making a mess, making trouble.”

“It sounds like you were very close to them.”

“We were close, yeah. Or I liked to think so. After mom walked out we had to have each others’ backs. Dad was...he was a good dad, but he wasn't prepared to be on his own with us like that. I practically raised them all myself.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What for? It was a long time ago. She chose to go, that’s on her.”

“Have you thought of...of trying to see you’re family? Maybe they’ve got to do with your unfinished business.”

“They moved. They seem to be doing fine without me.” She gave him a wry smile. “I guess I was just flattering myself, thinking all those years that I was holding the house together. It turns out, they didn’t need me.”

“I’m sure they did.”

“No, they didn’t. And that’s a good thing. You shouldn't rely on anyone totally, to the point of being dependent. I’m proud of them. Really, I am. They learned to be tough, when Mom left. They’re doing just fine.”

“You don’t think they’ve got anything to do with your unfinished business?”

Alex shrugged. “How can I know? So much is unfinished. I never got to see my little brothers graduate, I’ll never see them grow up, see them married, have jobs, lives. I won’t do any of those things myself. I won't get to travel or find out what I was any good at in life. But everyone dies. Millions of people have died and not gotten to do those things. That’s life. It’s not special. I don’t see how any of that could be enough to give me unfinished business, or else I think there’d have to be a lot more ghosts.”

“What about your mother?”

She stared at him until he looked away. “In spite of myself, I’m starting to like you, Nick. But don’t push it. Don’t ask about my mom like we know each other.”

“I’m sorry. I just thought you might want to talk.”

“Sure, we can talk. Just mind your own bloody business.”

“Maybe I can help you. I’ve—I’ve had ghosts for clients, before. I’ve helped other people figure out what their business is, and how to get it done.”

“You’ve had ghosts for clients, as a bloody solicitor? What sort of legal counsel does a ghost need?”

“You’d be surprised,” he said, immediately more at ease now that he was talking about something he understood, maybe the only thing he’d ever been halfway competent at. “Take wills alone, for instance. Say your wishes aren’t being carried out, or something was left out or changed that shouldn’t have been, or is being misunderstood, or distorted—people can get nasty around deaths, especially if they’re down and out and looking to cash in. It can bring out a lot of ugly disputes between family members who should be coming together to mourn and follow their loved one’s wishes, but sometimes they can’t, or they won’t, because of the past, because they’re bitter or jealous or resentful, and having all these things boil up after your death, it’s enough to make some stick around until they feel they’ve done something to make up for past mistakes or right some wrongs or help their families come to terms with it all.”

“Well, that’s not the case with my family. They don’t squabble like that, not over something like this. I don’t see where you come in, in that situation, anyway.”

“Somebody has to interpret the will. If you’re careful you can insert yourself into these situations without anybody being the wiser, they’ll think it was their idea all along to seek your counsel.”

“Ah. All right. That’s...that’s sort of cool, actually. As cool as interpreting a legal document can be. How’d that fit into your whole being an evil vampire set on world domination shtick?”

“Please, I could hardly have kept busy all those years when the Old Ones only got this bee in their bonnet quite recently. This was a side gig. Gratis stuff.”

“Wow. So you do have a heart.”

“It was nice to work with people who needed you. Myself, I didn’t go in much for the vampire empire sort of thing. I mean, can you imagine? Sure, at first maybe that sounds sort of glamorous to certain kinds of people, but after a while, you have to wonder about the logistics, and it stops making any sense at all, and you’ve got to wonder why you’re bothering with it in the first place. So much heavy lifting for no reason. We’re probably the worst people in the whole world when it comes to running anything the size of a town hall, if they got the world handed to them on a silver platter they wouldn’t know what to do with it. No impulse control whatsoever with those guys, and they’re embarrassingly out of touch with reality. It’s like they all stopped paying attention in the Dark Ages, honestly.”

“Then why were you working for them?”

Cutler squirmed. “I mean, I—I wouldn’t, now. Now it doesn’t make sense to me.”

“But back then, why were you?”

“At first, I just couldn’t get away from those guys. I wasn’t...I didn’t know how to make it on my own. You need the network, to help cover up the fact that you don’t age, to smooth over all the bureaucratic red tape so you can keep working without changing your identity all the time. What a hassle. And then there was, well...all the blood just lying around. I didn’t have to...go get it myself.”

“You mean kill someone.”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t seem to have too many qualms about that, from where I was standing.”

He was silent, replied with a shrug as he stared at the carpet. "I had somebody else do that for me, didn't I? And, well. Time goes by, things change. You can get used to an awful lot you probably shouldn't."

“That’s why Hal thought you were a disappointment. You wanted blood when somebody else had already killed it for you and handed it to you.”

“Pretty much. And then, years pass, and you get a little...you get delusional. I can see that now. I didn’t, then. I thought I was being totally rational. You get overly confident, and then you get these sort of grandiose ideas, and you think you can’t go wrong, can’t possibly fail. If I was there, if I was the one who helped the Old Ones do what they hadn’t managed to do in thousands of years, then I’d—I guess be rid of him. I wouldn’t just be somebody who got kept around because of Hal. And he’d have to...I know how this sounds, now, it made sense, then. I can’t even say it.”

“Say it.”

“Then he’d have to notice me and he’d know he’d made a mistake when he left and he’d see how well I’d always been listening and learning and he’d be...I don’t know.”

“Proud of you.”

“I guess.”

Alex was quiet for a moment, and then said, “Must be one hell of a drug, that blood.”

“Yup.”

“But you miscalculated. Hal was good.”

“So I've been told.”

“But you tried to stop them, the Old Ones. At the end.”

“Well, yeah. They dumped me out with the rubbish.”

“I’m sensing a pattern here.”

“We’re all creatures of habit, I suppose.”

They sat quietly watching the television for a while, some old black and white film. Then he murmured, “What would you say about you and I cutting a deal?”

“I’d say you’re out of your mind entirely.”

“It’s really simple. I’m going to go crazy in here if I haven’t got something to do, and what’s the point of me being here if I’m not doing anything?”

“You can stack dominoes.”

Cutler grimaced. “He’s already tried getting me to stack those fucking dominoes three times.”

“Seems to work for him.”

“Does it, though? Anyway. What I’m asking is very simple, and it will benefit all of us. All you need to do, is go to my old office, and get some things and bring them back.”

“You want me to fetch your dry cleaning for you while I’m at it?”

“Just listen, Alex. I know you lot won’t let me leave the house yet, but there’s things I can do from here. I want to help with the rent. I can help quite a lot with the rent, actually.”

“Now I’m listening. But how, exactly, are you going to do that?”

“I have a not insubstantial amount in various savings accounts and investments. I’ve also got a profession that, once I reconnect with some old contacts, I can do something with from here, online.”

“Finally, a vampire with some goddamn cash. I mean, really, how has Hal not hoarded anything? What’s he been doing?”  
“Hal has spent his life alternatively locked up in barbershops and then going on decades long benders. Doesn’t make for good savings practices.”

“You’ve got a point. So, okay. I get your stuff, you crack open that bank account. What stuff am I getting? I’m not agreeing yet, mind, just feeling it out.”

“Oh, yes, thank god,” he said, visibly relieved. “You guys don’t even have a computer. How do you not have a computer? Do you people not go online?”

“I don’t think either Hal or Tom really understand how email works.”

“What about _you_ though? There’s so much for a ghost to do online, it’s a medium you can interact with almost exactly as you did when you were alive. That’s crazy, they didn’t have that back in...when did they invent Internet again?”

“I don’t know, you were the one who lived through it.”

“Whatever. You should get a computer.”

“Sure, I’ll stroll down to the store and walk out with one, that’ll go over well.”

Nick waved a hand. “I’ll go with you.”

“I knew it, this was all a bid to get out of the house.”

“No, it’s not. I don’t even care about leaving the house anymore, for now, if you get my laptop.”

“Jesus, that’s sort of sad.”

“I don’t care. It’s boring here and I refuse to become a domino-stacking neurotic.”

“You’re really dissing on the dominoes, but they get the job done.”

“I want my phone and my laptop. They should be on or in the desk. There’s also a box.”

“Okay, where’s the box?”

“It’s inside the bottom filing cabinet behind all the files.”

“Okay, so it’s a secret box.”

“It’s not a secret box.”

“And yet you’ve hidden it in the one place no one would look, because who the fuck would ever willingly open a filing cabinet.”

“Please just get it. And don’t bother trying to open it, you don’t have the code.”

“I wasn’t going to snoop in your secret box, geez, what do you think I am, the secret service? I’ll get it, if it’s not too big.”

“It’s not. I don’t remember how heavy it is, but I think it should be fine.”

“You don’t remember?”

“I don't open it.”

“Okay, so...why do you want it?”

“I don’t like it being there.”

“You’re badmouthing Hal for being a touch neurotic, but you’re just paranoid.”

“Please just get it. Also the thumb drive. It’s blue. Here, I’ll write down the address.”

“I don’t think I can teleport that far. Can I even go someplace I’ve never been?”

“Just go in short bursts then. You have an exact location, you can do it.”

“If this is some plan to get me out of the house so you can escape, it’s not going to work. They’ll hear the door open and they know I don’t use the door.”

“I think we both know I’m not going anywhere.”

“How do you even know they haven’t thrown all your stuff out and given the office to someone else by now?”

“Because the owner of the building owes me that office indefinitely and my boss and I have an arrangement.”

“I’m going to go ahead and translate that as vampire nepotism. All right then,” she said, taking the napkin on which he’d written the address. “Off I go.”

She vanished into the night. It was exhilarating to have a mission, a mission all of her own, an adventure she was in charge of, pushing her new skills to their limits. She made it to the office in twenty-six jumps. Not bad at all, for a first long jaunt. Very good, actually. She felt a little...not tired, exactly, upon arrival, but like she needed to recharge her ghost batteries or something. She traversed the office on foot and felt her energy restoring.

His office was standard, as far as she could tell. Typical, bland, what she’d expect of an office, really. Except for the pile of blankets under the desk and the clothes hanging in the gutted shelf space of what was probably supposed to be a second filing cabinet.  
“Was he freaking homeless?” she whispered, even though no one could possibly hear her.

She wandered through the office until she found a store room where she got a garbage bag and dumped his clothes into it. She paused for a moment and then stuffed a blanket and a big warm-looking jacket in after it. Under the jacket were a set of mittens.  
“What in the world was he doing in here, preparing for the next Ice Age?”

She tossed the mittens in too for good measure. The laptop and phone were easy, they were in the drawer that slid out beneath the top of the desk. She set them on the desk.

There was disappointingly little to snoop in. The only sort of funny thing in the room was his certificate with 1947 stamped on it, hanging right there on the wall. Otherwise, it was all so mundane. It was all so mundane until she opened the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and found a huge bag of cocaine. And under the bag a number of prescription bottles full of painkillers.

“You’ve got to be joking. No, of course. Of course he does,” she muttered. She moved them aside to get to the box. It was a black rectangle, taller than a loaf of bread but not quite as long. It was not heavy. She set it on the desk and stared at it.

“I really shouldn’t. But how can I not?”

Hesitating for a long moment, she phased her hand through the box and groped blindly around inside for a moment. She thought hard and envisioned what she wanted to happen. She wasn’t sure if she could do this, but she’d done something similar once when she’d stolen a magazine off the dresser in Tom’s room through the door when he was sleeping.

She swiped her hand through the box and phased its contents straight through it, dumping them onto the desk.

For a moment she stood there, not believing she’d actually done it. She was shocked to find that she actually felt guilty, and her guilt made her angry. Why should she feel bad about looking in his stupid box? He’d had her murdered. It was her right to snoop through his stuff as much as she wanted, especially since she was doing him a huge favor, out of the kindness of her heart and also for that rent money.

Out of spite she looked at the junk on the desk. There were two sets of identity disks, one red circle and one green octagon strung on a piece of leather that looked like a bootlace. They were old and worn but she could still read the number stamped onto it, and the name, Cutler. She didn’t know what the rest of the letters meant. She was no history buff but she knew that the disks were different nowadays, they were metal.

Somehow it hadn’t really occurred to him that he’d been alive, that there had been a period of time in history in which he’d been human before Hal got to him.

There were two gold bands, wedding bands, tied together on a piece of fraying cord.

There was a lock of brown hair and there was a black pouch tied closed with a knot and inside was a rosary with white beads.

Inside another bag there was an old handkerchief, scalloped around the edges, and stained with dark brown stains she realized with disgust were blood. In one corner there was a tiny red rose embroidered with faded green leaves.

There were a couple old photographs, one of a pretty, meek looking woman in a wedding dress with her veil drawn back, smiling a smile that was somehow secretive. The photo was torn in half and she was alone.

There was a shell casing, a tiny golden cross on a golden chain inside another knotted shut pouch, a tiny perfume vial, discharge papers, a few faded letters inside a yellowed envelope she dared not open in case somehow her incorporeal fingers damaged it. A snail’s shell, newspaper clippings, a calligraphy pen, a copy of the certificate on the wall folded up into a square.

With horror she realized that she had defiled a grave. These were human things, these were the final remains of someone no longer on the Earth, sealed away, entombed in the safe. They didn’t quite belong to the Cutler she knew, but he was dragging them along behind him through the decades anyway, dragging this dead man’s safe behind him.

She swept all of the things back into the box, not wanting to see any more, cramming them back inside. She gathered the belongings and left the office behind. It took her twenty-nine jumps to get home.

In the house Cutler was on the couch. At first she thought he was sleeping, but then his gaze slid to her and his eyes flashed like an animal’s at night beneath their lowered lids.

“I got your stuff,” she said, totally unnecessarily. She lifted the bag and shook it. “Clothes and things.”

“Oh. I didn’t ask you to do that.”

“I know. I just figured it might be nice.”

“Thank you.”

“Were you sleeping in that office?”

“Sometimes.”

“Okay then. Here’s your precious electronics,” she said, setting the laptop and the phone on the table. “And your box.”

His eyes blinked open wider and he moved to the table to boot up the laptop. “Thank you, Alex, really.”

“I mean, in a way you paid me to do it, so.”

“Still.”

“Aren’t you going to open that?” she said, nodding her head at the box.

He didn’t even look away from the screen to glance at it. “No.” He paused, smiled sheepishly, and said, “You know, I don’t think I even remember exactly what’s in there.”

She didn’t know if she believed that or not.

“Now what?” she said.

“Now I’ve got to log into everything and make sure it’s all in order. Then I’ve got to go through all my contacts and see what’s what.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Means that I’ve got a lot of contacts but at any given moment at least half of them might want to see me dead rather than work with me.”

“I can’t imagine why. But hang on a minute, I don’t think we want you chatting with a bunch of vampires online. That can’t be a good influence. And we don’t want them knowing about us living here.”

“Good thing most of the vampires fall on the want me dead side of things, then. Don’t worry, Alex, I’m not stupid.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“I’ll just start small,” he said, biting his lip as he paused in his scrolling through an Excel file. “And see what happens.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Some of these people won't be overly enthused to hear from me.”

“Well, duh. You tried to expose all the werewolves and wipe out all the vampires. Who’s that leave, the gnomes?”

“I work with werewolves. I like them.”

“Yeah, I could tell that from how you tried to start a bloody fear campaign on them.”

“That was nothing personal. I mean, I wouldn’t do that _now_.”

“That makes it all better, then.”

“Maybe I’ll just do small time stuff and work by myself for a while until everything blows over.”

Alex spluttered. “Blows over? Good luck with that, you’ll pretty much be waiting to outlive everyone on this list if that’s what you want to happen.”

“I’ll just do it later, they’re all sleeping now anyway,” he mumbled, closing the page. “Here, do you want to mess around with it? It’ll at least be less boring than watching TV with no sound on.”

Alex pulled the laptop over to her. “What should I look up?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the ghost singles site.”

“You’re joking.”

“I am. But, you know, there’d be a market for that, somebody should make it.”

“You can’t just have stuff like that up on the Internet.”

“Of course you can. There’s tons of supernatural run sites. I mean, most are sort of hidden and you need passcodes and such, but some are just out there. Humans pop on and join in sometimes, they think it’s roleplay.”

“Huh. All right then. Is there a ghost Facebook where I can get some tips and tricks?”

“Nothing quite like that because nobody is so forward with their identity. This isn’t always the safest thing to be doing. I’ve got this thing pretty well off the grid though, untraceable and such.”

“You’re sure you know how to do that right?”

“Oh, no, somebody did it for me. I could do it now though, I watched how she did it.”

“Well, put me on whatever the closest thing to ghost Facebook is, then.”

He brought her to a website that had the raw, stripped down look of sites in the early nineties, with a black background and text that was all lit up with hyperlinks. To get there he navigated through a link in an email and followed a series of links demanding different passwords. “I think this is the best one.”

“It doesn’t look very slick.”

“Well, in case you haven’t noticed, we aren’t members of the most tech savvy bunch. For some reason it never occurs to a lot of ghosts how much they could do online, and most vampires are still hung up on the telegraph.”

“So since I’m in here I can read all of whatever you’ve posted, right?”

“Sure, all twelve posts.”

The posts were boring. They were all no more than four sentences in length, some of them simply stating geographic coordinates or directing someone to another site with legal information. His username was similarly disappointing, just a string of gibberish, random letters and numbers.

“You’re so dull,” she said. “Give me that.”

He gave her the laptop, having navigated to a page that scrolled down seemingly forever, full of links to various threads. “You can start here. Lots of information to go through. It might be sort of hard to understand at first, because there’s rules to how you can post, and anything too blatant or against the guidelines gets taken down in seconds. But you’ll catch on quick.” He yawned and stretched, rested his cheek on his hand.

“I’m not letting you bring these into your room yet,” Alex said, putting her hands on the phone and laptop. “I can’t have you calling a bunch of bloodsuckers over here to spring you out.”

“I wouldn’t do that, and also I’d have nobody who’d do that for me, but okay. I get it.”

“Take your other stuff. Your damn winter gear.”

“Oh. You got my warm clothes,” he said, blinking as he peered into the bag. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, well. I figured there had to be a reason somebody’d keep mittens in his office in the summertime.”

“They don’t really help too much. Unless you stick those hand warmers things inside of them.”

“I don’t get it, are you preparing for hibernation or something?”

“No. But if your heart beats about once per minute, you’re not exactly circulating a lot of blood. Your hands get all numb. It feels gross.”

“Hal’s never mentioned getting cold.”

“Well, like I've said before, we can’t all be like the great Hal Yorke.”

“I wish I could feel cold.”

He held out his hand, hesitantly, not looking at her face. She paused, and then lightly wrapped her fingers around his wrist. She closed her eyes and took a breath. “I’m not getting much.”

“Guess you’ll have to read up and do some studying then.”

She let go of him and turned her face to the screen and began to read.


End file.
